I'd sensed the beginning of the end when I was summoned to the executioner's office. Knowing you had just a day to live was a queer and eerie thing I was least prepared for. I asked for a bottle of Jack Daniels when offered a last request and declined to see my family who arrived moments earlier. I couldn't bear to look into their eyes, I daresay their respective emotional gazes would kill my soul before the reaper took my body, I reckoned it prudent to keep whatever was left of the former.

In a moment of solemn reminiscence, I can't say for a certain that I regretted my actions- deliberate or otherwise- that led me here. I did what I felt at the time,had to be done, mostly with a total disregard for protocolary ethics. The all too familiar sense of inebriation kicked in and ushered in sleep as my senses held unto evergreen memories -one last time.

Dawn came sooner than I'd expected and with it an inevitable sense of foreboding. Enroute the execution ground, Silence and Sentinel, the last of my camaraderie were already tied to poles. I am overwhelmed by a nascent wave of trepidation as the priest stepped forward for last prayers, it's in that moment of clarity I realized the idea of dying wasn't a very bright one. I opted for "NO BAG" and couldn't help suppress a smirk after I heard my comrades choose the same. Their unwavering loyalty to the very end almost brought a rare tear and I'm filled with gratitude.

"Arms at the ready!", the respective gun cocks triggered an avalanche of thoughts. A headshot means I'll be dead before my brain can process what happened. I read sometime in my early youth that there is an estimated seven minutes of brain activity after the heart has ceased beating, I questioned the veracity of that moments from death since there wouldn't even be any brain left once the bullet hit home.

"Aim!!" I quickly mustered a Hail Mary, and slowed down towards the end so that I carefully mouthed "now and at the hour of our death". Amongst the barrage of thoughts, one silly troubling one surfaced: I hoped there was going to be an afterlife because I candidly found the prospect of traipsing an eternal void incredibly frightening. "FIRE!!!"